Dylan McDermott stars with Gerard Butler in the action thriller Olympus Has Fallen, playing a Secret Service agent who has a pivotal hand in the siege on the White House. Playing an agent isn’t foreign to McDermott, as evidenced by his co-starring role in the Clint Eastwood feature In The Line of Fire.

McDermott is an actor who’s managed to do first rate work on television (The Practice, American Horror Story, the underrated Dark Blue) and also carve out a solid film career (last year, he was seen in The Campaign and The Perks of Being A Wallflower). When asked about the changing face of television, McDermott says the landscape has shifted.

“Well the game has changed,” said McDermott, who’s currently working with Toni Collette on a pilot titled Hostages, where he plays an FBI agent. “When I first went to television in the late ’90s it was like a sign that your career was in trouble. And then after that, people flooded to television. Now of course everyone goes to television because the writing is sometimes better and there is more opportunity and interesting characters and there’s less movies. There’s a whole host of things happening. I think it’s an even playing surface now.”

In the clip below, McDermott talks about his collaboration with producer/writer Ryan Murphy on American Horror Story. “Some roles just stick better than others,” adds McDermott about his work on the series.

Olympus Has Fallen, now playing nationwide, also stars Melissa Leo and Rick Yune.